Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @07:33AM
from the kleenex-runs-scared dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "A European court has ruled in Google's favor, saying that allowing advertising customers to use the names of other companies as search keywords does not represent a trademark violation. The court also went on to say that Google's AdWords program is protected by a European law governing Internet hosting services. Google's main line of defense was claiming that companies that want to extend trademark law to keywords are really interested in 'controlling and restricting the amount of information that users may see in response to their searches.' The decision is the first in a series of decisions from the court about how trademark rights can be used to restrict information available to users. Google is currently battling several trademark keyword cases in the US, including a case against Rosetta Stone, Inc."

the problem stems from people using trademarks that have become synonymous with some field of expertise. ie like, 'Mysql Development' mysql wouldnt go try to suppress people because they used mysql in phrases, but, you get the idea. what you are doing is irrelevant to company's business (even furthers it), doesnt cost them anything and whatnot. but some companies, like apple etc, try to suppress people, and lay claim to mere words. even if you are a grocery store selling apples.

However, Trademark is far different than insanity that is patents and copyright at the moment. Trademarks are unique logo marks and trade names and you HAVE to defend them else they are null and void. It is supposed to protect your brand identity. Imagine if a company puts out a similar product with using your logo/mark or similar name however their product is crap and starts to ruin your brand name. This is what Trademark is suppose to protect and it works pretty well. i know that we have trademark agreements with several of their logos. They are basic rules, like we cannot use their logo to show endorsement, and they can't be larger than our company's logo and product name. But we are free to put "Premiere Partner with XYZ, Gold Partner with ABC," etc. We also have a couple trademarks that we use in particular builds of our open source software. Anyone is free to compile the code, but they can't use our trademarked images. We don't distribute those images in the source. Only the binaries we compile and support all have our logo on the splash screen so that our clients know it's our build and therefore covered under our support agreements. Likewise, we can't use the company's name or logo which we forked the product from to promote or declare our own.

I also agree with this ruling. It shouldn't be Google's responsibility. However if another company is using your trademark in their advertising with out consent or in a way that infringes on our brand, sue the advertiser.

regardless of how different trademarks are, as can be seen from the apple example in which apple was trying to clamp down on a real chain that sells real apples, because the used a logo of a green apple that was bitten on one side, they also can be abused.

as i came to believe - it is beyond stupid to let anyone have monopoly/ownership of any idea, creation or logical construct.

The difference is however that in the case of Google AdWords, the other brand doesn't have to be included in the ad itself, it can only be the keyword which triggers the ad to show up. The EU judge ruled that it is valid if McDonald's buys advertisements with the "Burger King" keyword, so that if users are looking for Burger King, the McDonald's ad will show up. This doesn't mean that Burger King will be actually meantioned in the ad, it's just the mechanism for triggering it.

Indeed. Name dropping in advertising only occurs when there is cast-iron proof of the statements being made.

"314 lower prices than Asda, 275 less than Sainsbury's!" says a Tesco advertisement. At the bottom of the screen, you'll note a specific date is mentioned, and own-brand produce is not included in the price comparisons. On that day, this was true, and they have the figures to prove it. You won't get that with a "Daz is better than the leading brand!" style advert.

I know you're being synical, but you're actually exactly right. Advertisers are bound to a lot more restrictions to what they can say and how they can say it than journalists, who can even purposely do illegal things to show it's effect to the audience.

UK advertisers are free to mention competitors if they stick to the truth. In theory they have to stick to the truth anyway, but if they mention a competitor they can be sure that the competitor will go over their ad with a fine tooth comb looking for any hint of untruthfulness to complain about. That, and mentioning your competitor is free advertising for them.

Yeah, it seems to me that this is actually the biggest reason why you don't see a lot of comparisons with competitors in European advertisements. It's just a bad idea to remind people of the fact there are alternatives to the stuff you're trying to sell.

Advertising and libel laws prevent that, not trademark laws. Those laws say that any comparisons with competitors have to be fair and truthful, and they get round that by not mentioning their competitors by name.

Not all ads are like that. The supermarkets for example compare their prices with competitors and mention them by name. Because X really does charge more than Y for a particular product, they can mention it in their ads.

The summary and the linked article are extremely incomplete !
Yes, Google was essentially exonerated from the charges - i.e. is not held responsible for the chosen adwords. But the buyers of adwords (the advertisers) can still be held responsible.
To quote the WSJ article [wsj.com]:
Google isn't liable for trademark infringement when it sells linked ads to a brand's competitor. The court held that the search giant is merely a host for ads and that it is an advertiser's responsibility to make clear if its product is different from that searched for.

The good thing is that google's service/business is acknowledged as a neutral one. But the advertisers can still be held responsible if they use the trademarked brand without the right to do so.

But the advertisers can still be held responsible if they use the trademarked brand without the right to do so.

Only if they use the trademark in a way that misleads consumers into believing the ad is somehow related to the trademark. You are generally fine using someone else's trademarks so long as there is no confusion over what the ad is for.

I wonder if Google's reputation for fighting the good fight ever plays a part in influencing their court battles. Judges are human beings after all, and while trying to be as impartial as humanly possible is their job, subconsciously some of them may want to reward one of the very few giant corporations out there that doesn't act like a sociopathic criminal.

From reading way to many decisions of the European Court lately, I doubt that. Judging by the style of those decisions, those guys there are more machine than human - long, exceedingly dry, scholarly analyses on usually a very solid legal-theoretical basis. I think they do a pretty good job in the IP field. An influence by reputation would be so subtle that it is virtually undetectable. I'll have a look at that decision later - gotta read it sooner or later anyway.

It's a well-known thing in the United Kingdom that British Telecom do not try very hard to crack down on certain premium rate call scams, even if they are illegal... now, it's certainly not BT's fault that some firm is using the telecommunications network to run a scam, but the huge profits directed towards the scammer/and/ British Telecom should be returned to the victim of a scam.

Similarly, I have no problem not considering Google responsible for someone trying to abuse its service... as long as they ret